Future of Baluchistan?

Comment: Ayesha Siddiqa Agha is a leading Pakistani academic and security analyst. Her work is research oriented and very sound in terms of facts and evidence she employs to substantiate her arguments. Her forthcoming book titled MILITARY INC: Inside Pakistan's Military Economy is a an indepth study which many of us are anxiously waiting to read. For details about the book, click here. Her article on Baluchistan crisis below raises some very pertinent and hard questions about the future of Baluchistan.

VIEW: The end of dialogue? —Dr Ayesha Siddiqa
Daily Times, December 10, 2006

Greater provincial autonomy accompanied with the introduction of a bottom-up approach to development and politics would improve conditions in Balochistan where the nationalists fret over the top-down development agenda which could change socio-economic reality of their province

Recently, I was at a seminar on Balochistan in London. The meeting, organised by the Foreign Policy Centre, was held in a committee room at the House of Commons and was attended by a large number of Baloch nationalists, hidden and not-so-hidden representatives from the Pakistani High Commission, other Pakistani nationals and members of the international media.

Participants spoke at cross-purposes and evinced a near-total inability to engage in a dialogue. Despite the predominant presence of the Baloch nationalists, it was Pakistan’s Minister of State for Information, Tariq Azeem who stole the show. He very forcefully drove the point home that since there weren’t too many people to present the statist perspective on the issue, the seminar denoted a bias against the government of Pakistan. He also pointed out how Islamabad was trying hard to bring development to the province and, in doing that had even lowered the standards to allow the Baloch to join the military. He determined that this was the best way to pull the Baloch out of their social backwardness and join the mainstream of economic development and progress.

The minister’s performance was impressive and reiterated what General Pervez Musharraf has been saying: the conflict is purely domestic and it needn’t be discussed in international forums; also, that it basically represents the tension between the myopic nationalists who want to keep the Baloch backward and the state that wants to modernise the tribal society.

Azeem’s voice, however, fell on deaf ears because the nationalists did not want to hear the official perspective, especially after the killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti. The situation at the seminar reminded me of the editorial in Daily Times after Bugti’s death which had pointed out the huge opportunity cost of killing a Baloch leader. A couple of days of interaction with the Baloch nationalists made it clearer to me the damage the state had done to its own cause by killing Bugti and creating a hero out of him.

For their part, the nationalists seem to have run out of options and find it difficult to move away from the maximalist position of struggling for an independent Balochistan. Although the international community, which the nationalists seek to address through such seminars, is not prepared to bite just yet, given its relations with Islamabad and the likely impact of Pakistan’s balkanisation on the region, there is very little sympathy among the nationalists for a Pakistani state or the development agenda proposed by Islamabad.

A better option would be for the Baloch to approach the issue on the basis of asking for greater autonomy and partnership in the province’s development. After all, why would General Musharraf not consider greater autonomy for Balochistan, especially after he has presented a similar proposal for Kashmir?

Musharraf’s proposal regarding autonomy for Kashmir is commendable since it is not just about changes in the governance of a territory but also about the meltdown of the political power structure. The Kashmiris are unhappy with New Delhi’s politics despite the fact that no one in India is allowed to buy property in Kashmir. Such policies were adopted to alleviate the concerns of the Kashmiris regarding other nationalities moving into Kashmir and dominating the socio-economic milieu. However, this approach did not make the Kashmiris happy because the overall policy framework continued to be top-down. Greater autonomy is likely to alter the political structure by making the Kashmiris more relevant to the State’s politics and governance.

Similarly, greater provincial autonomy accompanied with the introduction of a bottom-up approach to development and politics would improve conditions in Balochistan where the nationalists fret over the top-down development agenda which could change socio-economic reality of their province. Their fear is that allowing other ethnic groups to come and settle in Balochistan would turn them into a minority. The bottom-up approach to development, on the other hand, would necessarily mean allowing the Baloch to govern themselves and set the agenda. This would also mean more schools, hospitals, training centres etc rather than investing in large cantonments or structures in which the people feel that they do not have any ownership.

Currently, Balochistan has about 43 paramilitary cantonments, six cantonments with three others in the making, three naval bases and hundreds of military checkpoints. The Baloch consider these as symbols of state coercion, especially when they have very little representation in the military. Balochistan’s share of personnel in the armed forces is about 0.1 percent which does not necessarily mean that all these personnel are Baloch. This figure pertains to all those who have joined the services on a Balochistan domicile. Furthermore, most of the senior positions in the provincial government are manned by Punjabis or other ethnic groups. This situation can change only if more Baloch would join the civil services and the military. However, this should not require lowering standards to accommodate the Baloch; instead, the government should improve the standards of the Baloch by bringing better education to the province.

The top-down model, as is obvious from the conditions in the province, suffers from inherent problems. It creates artificial and fragile partnerships. For instance, while the government killed a brutal tribal leader, Nawab Akbar Bugti, it also replaced him with other people most of whom are ‘wanted’ men.

Although men in similar conditions are holding important positions in other provinces as well, the fact is that the use of this approach in Balochistan is analogous to Mancur Olsen’s concept of replacing stationary bandits with roving bandits. But the men that have replaced Bugti in Balochistan, given the nature of the Baloch society, would always be afraid of someone avenging Bugti’s death. Hence, they would never be able to settle down and bring stability. In fact, the more weapons and money they get for establishing control over the area, it would bring greater mayhem and instability.

The government’s plan to develop the province is undoubtedly a good idea. But this must only be achieved through creating a sense of ownership among the Baloch of the development process. The development of Gwadar, which is currently controlled by the central government or the fact that the first phase of the project only employed about 100 Baloch and that too on daily-wage basis, does not provide that ownership.

The Baloch are also suspicious about the division of resources. The latest report of the State Bank of Pakistan claims that the provincial government has run an overdraft of Rs22 billion and is liable to pay Rs22 million annually as interest on this overdraft. The Balochistan government will never be able to pay back this money with its meagre earnings of Rs1.6 billion. Such conditions are directly linked with the fact that the central government pays the lowest amount for the natural gas obtained from the province. The gas from Balochistan costs $0.38 per thousand cubic feet versus $2 from Sindh and $3 from Punjab.

The situation is far more complex and calls for a major meltdown of the existing power structure in the country. Introducing a bottom-up approach towards the crisis would automatically result in changing the entire structure of centre-province relations.

The author is an Islamabad-based independent defence analyst. She is also an author of a book on Pakistan’s arms procurement decision-making, and on the military’s economic interests